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*Interviewed by Lisa Miller
Biography
On their debut album THE END OF THE BEGINNING, Like A Storm stir up a torrent of infectious hard rock. The Vancouver-based quartet's first full-length is an avalanche of captivating choruses and hard-hitting grooves, as exemplified by the first radio single Chemical Infatuation. Electronic textures and string flourishes cascade into a wall of distortion as vocal melodies hypnotize.
Brothers Chris, Matt and Kent Brooks along with Thomas Karanasos conjure a dynamic rock sound that's simultaneously ethereal and edgy.
Like A Storm's journey began in 2005. After rehearsing once in their native New Zealand, Matt, Chris and Kent decided to move to North America and pursue the rock n' roll dream.
Upon moving to Canada, it only took one show for Like A Storm to build a buzz. Kai Marcus (Methods of Mayhem/Noise Therapy) saw the band and was instantly blown away. He struck up a friendship with the guys and introduced them to multi-platinum producer Mike Plotnikoff (Three Days Grace/My Chemical Romance/Buckcherry) in early 2006. Plotnikoff and the boys immediately began trading ideas for what would become THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
The band began officially recording with Plotnikoff in Calabasas, CA in early 2007. Virtuoso musician and former Yes keyboardist Igor Khoroshev joined the production process, bringing his progressive and classical influences to the record. After over 16 months of writing, recording and experimenting, the band emerged with THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
Our USA correspondent Lisa Miller caught up with the guys backstage prior to the band’s appearance at Rocklahoma.
* Live pictures featured from Rocklahoma courtesy of www.jrmpix.com.
You are originally from New Zealand, but where are you based now?
We are based in Vancouver, Canada. It's just a little to far to fly back and forth to New Zealand haha!
Tell us a bit about your debut record....
Well it is called "The End Of The Beginning" which we spent 16 months recording in LA. We went down there thinking it would take 3 months but we got a little excited and spent 16 haha!
That involved living with our producer and his family staying in the spare room in Calabasas. If you aren't familiar with Calabasas it's where all the movie stars and rock stars live. So for a bunch of Kiwi dudes it was pretty weird to be sitting down in Starbucks and Nikki Sixx would rock past or Tommy Lee or Travis Barker, even Ozzy Osbourne! So that was really cool experience.
Who is the label you have released the album on?
We are signed to a management company and label out of LA called Prospect Park and also have Korn who are one of our most favourite bands of all time, Janes Addiction, Five Finger Death Punch, Flyleaf....a whole lot of really good rock bands.
You have been pretty busy out on the road touring, can you fill us in on some of the bands you have played with since you moved over from New Zealand?
Our first ever tour of the USA was opening for Creed on they're reunion tour which was insane. We thought we were just going to be doing the small clubs, but we got thrown out onto the bigstage, which was an awesome experience though. Our first show in the USA was in front of 14,000 people in Pittsburgh!! I think at that moment we realized that was what we were born to do.
Played with Shinedown, Puddle Of Mudd, Hoobastank, Creed, Saliva, we have just come from the Rock On The Range festival which had Deftones and Three Days Grace. So we feel like we are just living the dream right now, without sounding too cheesy! But this is exactly what we moved over here to do and we feel so lucky to be doing it!
Your first time playing Rocklahoma, what are your thoughts so far?
Well we played in Tulsa last year with Creed and we know people down here like to have a good time, so we are looking forward to it!
We can't wait to see ZZ Top tonight and we are stoked to be playing at 7.15pm rather than midday at Rock On The Range or otherwise we would pass out if we played at midday here as it’s a fair bit hotter here!
What’s in store after Rocklahoma and the rest of 2010?
After this we have a few headline shows on our own, which is our first USA headline tour. It’s all come about quicker than we had expected. Then we are heading out with Drowning Pool for a while, then heading back up to Canada for some shows. Then after that it’s shooting our next video. That’s about as far as our calendar runs at this point in time, but that could all change on a dime. That’s one thing we have learnt, you have to be flexible!
